A polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) is expected as a clean power source for automobiles as well as stationary applications because of its operation at moderate temperature below 100° C. in contrast with another type of fuel cells. The biggest problem to be overcome for its commercialization is high cost. This problem is strongly concerned with the usage of large amount of precious metal of platinum as catalyst particles for electrodes of fuel cells. Therefore, the reduction of loading level of platinum catalyst particles has been required for a long time. A lot of efforts have been made for the minimum loading level of platinum by the development of well-dispersed very small size particles with high utilization. Recently the new technology of ultra-low platinum loading electrode (ULPLE) of which platinum catalyst particle is loaded mainly on the active site where the surface of carbon particle contacts the proton-conductive passage of polymer electrolyte, though the existing catalyst is further loaded on the carbon powder covered by the insulator material of rigid hydrophobic backbones of polymer electrolyte. The loading of platinum catalyst for this novel electrode was to be below 0.1 mg/cm2 with little decrease in the cell performance. PEFC is electric power source using hydrogen as fuel and oxygen in air as oxidant in general. The electrochemical reaction is described below.                Anode: 2H2→4H++4e−        Cathode: O2+4H++4e−→2H2O        
Hydrogen gas as a fuel is produced from reforming natural gas, methane or methanol and contains the small amount of CO as an impurity. The catalyst of Pt in the anode of PEFC is poisoned by the small amount of CO and the cell performance is immediately deteriorated. The phenomenon has been known as CO poisoning effect. The Pt—Ru binary alloy is considered to be CO tolerance catalyst. The manufacturing process of its alloy for ULPLE was the following: (1) formation process of proton conductive polymer resin on carbon materials particles, (2) the ion-exchange reaction process of proton and alloy-composition-element ions in the proton conductive polymer; and (3) reduction process at the lower temperature of 100˜200° C. under hydrogen atmosphere followed by the aging process. (U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,344,291, 6,528,201, 6,576,363, and 6,730,427, and The 42nd Battery Symposium in Japan p 570(2001))
The existing Pt—Ru binary alloy catalyst is generally made under high temperature of 1000° C. for the promotion of crystallization of the alloy. However in the case of ULPLE, the reduction temperature of alloy formation process for ULPLE was strictly limited to be below 200° C. even in the case of heat-resistant Nafion, since the material of proton conductive polymer resin tends to be deteriorated at relatively lower temperature because of its lower melting and decomposition temperatures of its material. Therefore the long aging period to keep the high temperature followed by reduction process was needed for the completeness of the alloy formation. The aging time was one month or more for the existing process. The new technology is strongly demanded to shorten the aging of time for practical application.